On This Day: September 21, the boy who said yes
On this day in 1937, The Hobbit was published for the first time.
It almost wasn't. The manuscript had reached the publisher George Allen & Unwin, and the man who ran the house, Stanley Unwin, did something odd with it: he handed it to his ten-year-old son Rayner and asked him to read it. Rayner liked it. That was the report that settled the decision to publish.
A boy with nothing to gain said yes, and a whole world walked in through the door.
Today's line: the yes that opens something big is usually small, and usually comes from someone who was never asked as an expert.
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